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Final Fantasy XII vs Half-Life 2 vs Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney vs The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess 2009
Results Round One Monday, May 4th, 2009 Ulti's Analysis Phoenix had the standard Board 8-infused early lead, but finished about where he was expected. And one day after RE4 proved it was not a finals contender (but still had good matches left in it), Twilight Princess went out and killed its own poll, putting itself into the discussion. Though it was never really in question, the real match here was Final Fantasy 12 vs Half-Life 2 for second place. Twilight Princess > Half-Life 2 was the major consensus here, but with all the casual shooters committing suicide this contest, FF12 > HL2 looked like a possibility more and more with each passing day. FF12 is about as mixed as a fanbase can be, but a mainstream Final Fantasy outright bombing is rare. This all added up to some rather worried people come match time, but this was laid to rest fairly quickly. At the beginning, Half-Life 2 built a 1000 vote lead in a little over two hours. And though FF12 did far better from this point until the end of the poll -- the lead only increased from 1000 to 2800 by the end, with a lot of prolonged stall periods -- Final Fantasy 12 never threatened a comeback or anything of the sort. This was one of those matches whose end result was only close on paper, but the winner was never in doubt. For one day, a casual shooter bothered not embarrassing itself. And make no mistake; losing to Final Fantasy 12 would have been VERY embarrassing. Match Trends Ngamer's Same Day Analysis Match Prediction Tonight... was supposed to be the best match of the whole opening round, according to alot of people pre-Contest. I mean, check out these Guru preds for 2nd place: * Half-Life 2 - 126 (58.33%) * Final Fantasy 12 - 80 (37.04%) * Phoenix Wright - 5 (2.31%) And yet you look through the Crew and Oracle picks for tonight and it's almost entirely a landslide in the other direction- what happened? Well, this happened * Ocarina - 54% * FF9 - 21% * HL1 - 15% * CC - 10% Yikes, hard to argue with that! Let's compare and contrast quickly * Ocarina >> TP - obviously, but I'm one of the biggest believers in TP and still think it could very well be right up there with FFX and contending for a Top Ten position, so I wouldn't be surprised at all if it shot up well above 40 * FF9 > FF12 - the way TP manhandled this game back in '06 after some had been expecting that GotY to go neck and neck was really telling, and I've got to figure it's only lost more steam in the last 2.5 years. but even if 9's ahead by a decent bit, 12 has the advantage of not losing votes to a Chrono game, so I really can't imagine it finishing below FF9's total * HL2 > HL1 - KHII is doing a great job of proving that just because you were the original doesn't ALWAYS mean you're the strongest, and thanks to the Orange Box and the continued progress of steam you could make a really fine case for HL2. but, sorry, the gap from that last match was just too large to be able to make up with only a minor strength upgrade. if there was some other PSX/PS2 RPG option in the bottom spot I would still at least consider the upset, but not as it stands * PW >> CC - cult games have really been shining ever since we got into the 32/64 bit era, and I see no reason why one of the most beloved games on the GameFAQs social boards wouldn't continue the trend. I used to think that heavy Nintendo competition would be bad news for a DS entry like Phoenix, but after the character performed so admirably in '08 I've got to give this series its props against any opponent. would not be shocked if Phoenix was even able to give Gordon a real run for his money here! And with that in mind, the numbers work out to just aboooooout * Zelda: Twilight Princess - 39.53% * Final Fantasy XII - 24.83% * Half-Life 2 - 19.03% * Phoenix Wright - 16.61% I like it! Next Day Review Hmm, the underperformance by Phoenix Wright here has me a little confused. I hear people explaining it away with "the character's more popular than the games", but this seems more like a case where the two would be exactly as popular, especially with the perfect match pic like that. I suppose its just more difficult to succeed as a cult/niche title without being the genre this site was built around, and I further suppose that we jumped to conclusions regarding Nintendo SFF; standing up to Bowser is a heck of a lot different from not folding to a top(ish?) tier Zelda title like this. Speaking of which, what a great showing from TP! It's pretty clear that while Europe and Asia have turned their backs on the series, the games are just as well-loved as ever everywhere else, as that was one heck of a Day Vote. And as for the second place battle... I have no idea what to think. I just can't wrap my head around HL2 being that much more popular than the original, even taking the Orange Box and recency and the GotY win (not here, but from most places) into account. Luckily we'll get to see it in action once again in a few weeks, hopefully that will allow me to draw some kind of sensible conclusion. External Links * Match Updates * Guru Match Predictions * Oracle Match Results • Previous Match • Next Match Category:2009 Spring Contest Matches